Your ideas are hugely valuable.

--S.B., Orinda, CA, novelist

“The endeavor of writing can be long and lonely. Mary Carroll Moore, master writing instructor, to the rescue! Moore packs How to Plan, Write, and Develop a Book with years of gritty good sense and big-picture perspective. Her techniques for drafting, organizing, and polishing a book are practical and time-tested. Here is a first-time book-writer’s best companion.”

--Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew,author of Writing the Sacred Journey: The Art and Practice of Spiritual Memoir

If I could implement all I've learned from you, I'd have a best-seller!

Pretend you’re a reporter for the New York Times. You’re going to interview your book idea.

List some questions you’d love to ask your book about its form, content, goals. You can start with something nonthreatening, as you would if you were a real reporter.

Ask your book some very good questions. Some ideas from my class are below, or you can make up your own:

What do you want to tell me about yourself?What form suits you best?Who is your readership and how will theyaccess you?What are you most eager to say?What are you most afraid to say?What genre are you?

When it runs out of things to say (or you getnervous about the answers) ask a different question.

The goal of this book-writing exercise is to surprise yourself. You’ll tap the hidden parts of yourself as a writer, the parts we often censor. You can strike gold--if you maintain the attitude of no-assumptions and anything can happen.

Books for the Blocked--These'll Get You Moving Again!

Escaping into the Open by Elizabeth Berg

Listen to Me by Lynn Lauber

Marry Your Muse by Jan Phillips

Pencil Dancing by Mari Messer

The Art of Slow Writing by Louise DeSalvo

Thinking about Memoir by Abigail Thomas

Write Your Heart Out by Rebecca McClanahan

A person’s life purpose is nothing more than to rediscover, through the detours of art, or love, or passionate work, those one or two images in the presence of which his heart first opened.Albert Camus

Sunday, December 18, 2011

I'm rerunning this blog from last December, since it is timely at this season. To honor my artist and focus on my writing, the blog will be taking a break until the first week of January. Feel free to browse the archives back to 2008 for inspiration--and consider taking a rest break and feed your own creative artist this month!

There are some important signs of burn-out that writers need to attend to. An overactive Inner Critic. A feeling of the blues about one's work. A sense of deep depletion, despite enough sleep and exercise.

December often rolls around with all of these symptoms, for me. I'm finishing up my fall semester of teaching my online and in-person classes. I adored them--the students were amazing, wonderful, and inspiring-- but I give so much to each group, holding the creative space for them when they can't see the pathway, it takes a lot of energy and time. This week, as the classes complete and the last posts are made, I find myself sitting on the couch, staring at the mountains outside my living room window, wondering where I am. More important, who I am. I can't tell anymore.

Crying jags often accompany this, for me. Wails of "I'll never write again" sometimes come too. It's normal to dive even deeper as the tension releases and the stress lessens, as both body and emotions come forward with long-ignored needs.

Don't get me wrong: I eat healthily, I exercise regularly, I sleep reasonable hours, and I have good family and friends support. I'm living a good life. But in the realm of manifestation and creativity, which is what my work is all about, I had been stretched to the max these past months. I didn't know any other gear to drive than Intense. I didn't know how to get back to the "necessary boredom" that Dorothy Allison talks about, the place where my own creativity bubbles up.

Somehow, though, I'd managed to carve out three weeks in my calendar. My spouse started a new job about that time, my son was visiting friends for the holidays, so I was alone.

So what next? How do I make use of this nothing, and let it heal me, fill me up again? I hadn't a clue how to begin.

Taking a Creative Retreat for the Inner Artist
I have a wonderful book for these occasions: The Woman's Retreat Book by Jennifer Louden. It's packed with ways to disengage and reacquaint yourself with yourself. I found it on a back shelf, went back to my spot on the couch near the mountain view. I closed my eyes and opened the book at random. Of course, it opened to this section "Feeding the Artist." I read the first line: "If there is one cosmic law I know the consequences of ignoring, it is this one: you cannot create from an empty well."

Duh. Why didn't I see this before I had my meltdown? Well, obviously, when one is empty, it's hard to see that. Many of us keep running anyway, fueled by adrenaline, and the joy of life gets dimmer and dimmer. We lose track of where we are, who we are. We get swept up with other people's lives (and creative needs--if you're a teacher). It's all good, it's all important. I love my work. But there's a moment to say, "Stop!" Let yourself go back to yourself.

I decided I would ignore both calendar and lists for these three weeks, as much as I could. Even my visioning lists went into a nice blue folder and into my desk drawer. I began to putter, to play.

The first day I cooked two soups. I love to cook, and two soups in one day seemed lovely and extravagant. Besides, the vegetable drawer was foreign territory and I could use up a dangerous-looking butternut squash (fine with the dangerous part cut off). I took a walk and went to bed by 9. The next day I listened to Christmas carols and wrapped a few gifts then read a lovely novel (Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann) and let myself nap. Day three I got out the card table and started a jigsaw puzzle. I cleaned out my clothes closet. I took myself to lunch.

You get the idea.

One of Jennifer Louden's most important directives in this chapter on "Feeding the Artist" is not to create while you're filling the well. Stop working on your project, stop trying to manifest anything. Ugh, that was hard. I hadn't had enough time to work on my novel-in-progress, so these three weeks were planned as full immersion. But when I took out the manuscript and my editing pen, I froze up. It all looked terrible--a sure sign of the Inner Critic's negative notions surfacing--and I couldn't bring myself to do anything. Reading Louden's advice felt like a reprieve.

Funny thing. As I began to fill up again, new ideas started coming. I would be watching a movie or marveling at McCann's amazing prose, and I would find myself thinking very lightly about my own creative projects. Images would come. An idea of how to solve a sticky plot problem in the novel. A place to get information I needed. I didn't pursue these, just took notes.

I'm letting the creative tension build for another week. It's getting fun. I look forward to my empty days, I no long dread the thought of moving so slowly.

This Week's Writing Exercise
1. Take stock. Do you need to feed the artist? Is she or he starving from too much output and not enough input these past busy months?

2. If the answer is yes, can you carve out time for a rest break? Even five hours in a day when nothing is needed of you is amazing and precious.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

My indie-released songwriter friends never understood why writers are so hung up about self-publishing. Musicians have long separated from the labels and ventured out on their own, releasing their own CDs and working with indie distributors like cdbaby.

But we writers have been told that unless we get an agent and go the traditional route, we'll never be taken seriously in our writing careers.

I went the traditional route for years--agent, large publisher, small press. Each experience had its ups and downs and I worked with some wonderful editors and publishers and some not so. I stayed away from the stigma of "vanity press," or self-publishing, because I believed it was a fast route to career suicide.

Besides, I wanted the marketing and distribution help a publisher could give.

Times have changed. Advances are few and small now, most publishers don't have the same careful editorial procedures I benefited from as a writer starting out in the 1980s. Manuscripts must arrive in pristine condition--the writer's responsibility. Agents and publishers demand a platform, a solid marketing plan and media presence, from most authors they sign nowadays. The writer must become more than just a wordsmith with a good story. She has to learn to sell her book as well as write it.

For this, writers get 7-1/2 percent of sales, which for a $14.00 trade size paperback amounts to about $1.13 per copy. We do the marketing work, we hire editors before submitting it. The publisher prints the book as orders come in (print on demand) in most cases, not wanting to carry inventory, or does a short run of less than 500 copies to see whether the book will sell. Agents take 15 percent of everything.

Some writers are thinking seriously about their options now. Many are choosing self-publishing.

They're figuring out the system themselves, they're crafting e-books and selling them for 99 cents a copy to drive up sales. They're making money. Even if they self-publish a printed book, through Create Space or Lightning Source, they can make up to $10.00 a copy after expenses are paid back (for typesetter, proofer, cover designer, and editor).

Self-publishing requires money up front, for a printed book. Less or none for an electronic book. But if you're going to have to market it yourself anyway, why not make $10.00 a copy instead of $1.13?

What's your experience with self-publishing? What are your thoughts?

Find out the potential, explore your options. Don't be swayed by the traditional route when there are more opportunities for writers than ever.

Your writing exercise this week is to read all about writer Darcie Chan. She was rejected by over 100 literary agents and dozens of publishers, then went on to self-publish her debut novel and sell over 400,000 copies on Kindle. Think this kind of story is a fairytale? It's happening more and more.

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Travelers in foreign territory often need good maps. But book writers rarely have them. We often don't know about the major stops--what I call "turning points"--in the book-writing journey. It's hard to tell when we've arrived, when we're ready to move on, when the writing is finally enough.

These five turning points are often where we get stuck and frustrated. Moving to the next level requires skills and a new approach,

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Upcoming Writing Classes with Mary

One-Day WorkshopsWriting Your Life: How to Plan, Write, and Develop Your MemoirOne-day workshop, Saturday, July 22, Loft Literary Center, Minneapolis. Whether you're writing for publication or family legacy, bring your memoir ideas to play with structure, theme, and focus in this hands-on workshop. Learn about pivot points, various ways memoirs are structured today, and how to get a reader's perspective on your life story. $105. Click here for details or to register.

Fall Online ClassesStrange Alchemy: How Place, People, and Situation Intersect in Your StoryEight-week class, starts October 25, sponsored by Loft Literary Center, Minneapolis. Weekly writing exercises, discussion, readings from well-known fiction and memoir writers, and workshopping your writing for intensive feedback lets you explore the balance of tension and action, how the narrative arc (the growth or change in your character or narrator) interacts with this conflict, and how "container"—the primary atmosphere in your story—can drive emotion in your story.$390. Click here for details or to register.

Your Book Starts Here: Learn to Storyboard Your Book!Eight-week class, starts October 25, sponsored by Loft Literary Center, Minneapolis. Learn a simple template that many professional writers use to build a strong structure of a novel, memoir, or nonfiction book via storyboard brainstorming. Great for all stages, from writers just starting a book project to those with a work-in-progress. $390. Click here for details or to register.

Your Book Starts Here: part 3Eight-week class, starts October 25, sponsored by Loft Literary Center, Minneapolis. For writers at revision, with a complete manuscript draft. Small group workshopping for intensive feedback each week.$390. Click here for details or to register.

Writing RetreatsYour Book Starts Here: Week-long Writing RetreatJuly 24-28 (SOLD OUT) or October 16-20, Madeline Island School of the Arts, Madeline Island (Lake Superior)Five days of workshop, personal coaching, and plenty of time to work on your book in our great community of book writers at all stages, working in all genres, at the gorgeous Madeline Island art school. This retreat will become a highlight of your summer or fall. Lodging available in clean, cozy cottages at the arts school campus. $625. Click here for details (summer retreat) or here (fall retreat).

Independent study available for either week.

A Little about Me . . .

Mary Carroll Moore is an award-winning, internationally published author of thirteen books in three genres, writing teacher, editor and book doctor for publishing houses. For thirty years she's helped thousands of new and experienced writers plan, write, and develop--and publish!--their books. Photo by Bruce Fuller Photography.

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If you believe you have a book inside you just waiting to come out, here is a guide that will ensure your book’s arrival in the world. In clear, accessible prose, Mary Carroll Moore leads the aspiring author through every step of the challenging, rewarding process of developing and completing a full-length book.

--Rebecca McClanahan, author of Word Painting

Encouraging Words--Well-Known Writers with Large Number of Rejections--But Published!

Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo--397 rejections (and it became a movie)A Wrinkle in Timeby Madeleine L'Engle--97 rejections (and it won the Newbery Medal for best children's book of 1963; it's now in its 69th printing)Cinder Edna by Ellen Jackson--40 rejections (and it has won multiple awards and sold 150,000 hard copies). Judy Blume says she received "nothing but rejections" for 2 years.Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot--17 rejectionsHarry Potter novels by J.K. Rowling--rejected by 9 publishersThe Diary of Anne Frank--16 rejections (and now more than 30 million copies are in print)Dr. Seuss books--more than 15 rejectionsJonathan Livingston Seagullby Richard Bach--140 rejectionsGone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell--38 rejectionsWatership Down by Richard Adams--26 rejectionsDune by Frank Herbert--nearly 20 rejections

To all book writers: Believe in your story. Keep trying. The right home for your book is out there, waiting for you to discover it.

Want to get the creative brain going?

Book writers (and any writers) need to know how to engage the creative right brain that "writes" in images. Think of any wonderful book that's left you swimming in a setting or characters--the writer has successfully used the image-creating part of the brain. But our normal workaday lives short-circuit this part. Check out this cool video of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain scientist at Harvard Medical School, recounting her personal experience of a left-brain stroke and her awakening to right-brain reality. Pretty amazing fusion of brain science with what it feels like to a brain scientist having a stroke:http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229

Flying Squirrels Bring Creative Jolt to Novelist

Flying squirrel gets into house--disrupts routine, gets novelist thinking differently. This happened to me! For two days, as I chased the squirrel (actually, it was all night since they are nocturnal), I slept very little. And got many new ideas for my novel-in-progress.Go figure!Maybe...book writers need creative jolts? Routine dulls our imaginations? How has an unexpected interruption actually been a gift for your creativity this week?

At the Loft Literary Center, I can always tell which students in my classes have taken Mary Carroll Moore’s class on book-writing. They talk about writing their book in "islands" and using storyboards to figure out how those sections relate to each other. When another student confesses to feeling overwhelmed by the material her memoir might include, they readily advise, “You should try Mary Carroll Moore’s method.” I second that.--Cheri Register, author of Packinghouse Daughter and American Book Award winner

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